


Glass Bluebells

by bladeCleaner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 01:10:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes a sharp turn at cyberpunk and goes down Nepeta And Kanaya Fawning Over Nature And Mechanics Lane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass Bluebells

She checked iEden on her glassgear. According to her 3D map, she was walking in the right direction. She clicked off the hologram with two blinks.

Her migration to the capital city of section H of Altearth, Forwapolis, as a bioterrorist and fauna-engineer, had been slotted into the EPO database months ago.

Compared to most of the people in her field she led a comparatively primitive life; her oxygen was pumped through a low-rate filter and wasn’t enhanced. She occasionally left the protection of the Shield with an old re-structured gas mask from sweeps past. It didn’t even have glassgear installed.

Still, when it came to bio-engineering plants and cold preservation of creatures on the outliers, her position near the edges of the Shield and desert wastes came in handy.

However, she came to realize something. Even in the beautiful barren nights where she could only hear the hum of the geological generator under her block, one too many beeps on her VRpester reminded her that she had never seen another living troll in real life. Her contributions helped, but how much would that matter sweeps from now? The best she could probably hope for was a slight improvement in technologies leaning towards organic lifeforms.

She’d requested a change a sweep ago. She wanted to move into any sort of urban metropolis. They’d shot her straight into the capital like a stake into a heart.

She’d wondered why she’d been given that sort of position. Doc Scratch was a funny one. She’d read stories in little glitches in the VRums, plucked little bits of data through the cracks in slummy, badly-coded streets.

She meandered, neglecting to realize she’d been wandering out of transmission until she was surrounded by the silver branches of signal-blocking trees. She cursed. Had she been so absent-minded as to wander off the designated path? There’d been whispers about rebels in the forest, hackers who resisted the Condesce’s rules and her great four AI. Even worse-ferals, sheer animals, who’d managed by brute force to elude culling.

She tapped iEden for her map. Nothing came up. She swore again.

Still, she did pride herself as quite the survivalist. The first thing to do, she reasoned, as find shelter.

She drifted between trees, marveling at the expert way they’d seemed to have been set up-they were still under the Shield, but places without filters were less bearable, yet whoever had built these seemed to have inplanted filters or some kind into the veins where the sap should be. They were all bare of leaves, but under the metallic bark she swore she almost felt a pulse.

Eventually she found a cave. It seemed to have had inhabitants and she cautiously ventured inside. She placed one hand on the eroded walls, amazed that it didn’t have a single heat-seeking, mood-detecting temperature recorder in them. Her fingers-still covered in protective prosthetics ever since her accident-grazed soil.  
She turned on the nerve sensors in her bodysuit in her hands and felt the earth give way, slowly, under her digits. There was a single fiery pinprick in the depths of the cave and she made her way in, withdrawing her chainsaw from its case.

It required a lot of physical strength to wield it and she held it aloft uncertainly as she ventured inside further. She reached the light-a primitive solar-rechargable cell-and saw on the walls fresh paintings of blood. She backed away extremely slowly and her foot lightly grazed a body-

Ferals.

As soon as she thought the word an olive whirlwind leapt out of the darkness onto her. The next minute was a lot of yelling- fumbling as Kanaya tried to wrest control, her chainsaw whirring angrily. At some point the feral knocked it out of her hand and she tried attacking her with her bodysuit’s defense mechanisms.

Eventually the feral had her pinned down on the ground. She stared at her. She had no bodysuit and was fully exposed in bare fabrics. Usually you only gave that privilege to inclade. Her eyes were olive-rimmed and yellow-cat-irises, wide and glowing in the dimness. She had a lop-sided smile, the messiest hair she’d ever seen and was covered in blood.

So it was a shock when she said, “Hi! I’m Nepeta. Purrrrrrrr-leasure to meet you~! What’s your name?”

She stammered out a little garbled Alternian until she said, “Um. Hello. My designated nomenclature is Kanaya. Kanaya Maryam. I would most appreciate it if you allowed me to contact my friends before devouring my insides.”

Nepeta tilted her head quizzically. “I don’t want to eat you! You’re lost, right? There’s always all these lost hikers on the trail. Pawful direction.”

“Why do you keep making puns?”

“They’re meowverlous.” This was accompanied by a wrinkle of the nose and a wide-toothed smile.

“Now I am wishing quite presently that you were a feral cannibal.”

Nepeta laughed. Then her face became a bit more solemn and said, “If I let you up, you won’t try killing me, right?”

“…You have my word, Nepeta. If you do the same.”

“Sure!”

With a bounce in her step Nepeta sprung up away from her body and Kanaya brushed off some imaginary dirt off her dust-suit. She retrieved her chainsaw in the sand and tucked the lipstick back in her pack.

“So…um…Nepeta. Do you live here?”

“Yep! This is my hidey-hole for felines. Isn’t it purrfect?”

“It’s…certainly…animalistic.”

“Thanks. Do you want to see it?”

“I…frankly do not see much in your humble abode, Nepeta. I beg your pardon, but I must get back to the path.”

“Oh! Then I’ll take you.”

At this Kanaya raised an eyebrow.

“You would do this for someone who nearly killed you?”

“Not even close!” Nepeta beamed. “But I will ‘cause you’re really pretty, and I wanted to visit the city anyway.”

Kanaya flushed. “I’m flattered, Nepeta, but you must allow me to repay your kindness in some small way.”

Nepeta bounced up and down, seemingly boundless in energy. “Ummmm, meowbe there is a way you could help! I don’t have a computer here, you see, and my meowrail is getting worried-I don’t have a bodysuit ID so I have to bribe people to send him messages! Could you send him one for me when we get there?”

She nodded, then asked, “Nepeta…shouldn’t you be living in the…”

Nepeta hissed in the least hostile way she could. “I’m a cat. Cats don’t live in enclosures!”

Kanaya simply sighed.

\--

The trip to Forwapolis proved…more enjoyable than she’d expected. Nepeta was clearly off some hinges, but she knew her way well. In fact, she had some fascinating knowledge about the plants around them-she even knew about pistils and stamens, something most trolls definitely ignored in favor of backdoor manufacturing and binary code.

“…Orchids-that’s my favorite flower.”

“You looked like a rose troll! They’re sooo romantic. Mine are bluebells. They’re so fun to paw at.”

“Most trolls don’t even know what bluebells look like. How did you acquire a specimen?”

“My backyard is full of them! Sometimes Pounce brings back some because he knows how much I love love love them.”

Finally, they reached the city.

“…I suppose this is…it?”

“..Yes.”

“I can’t let the guards see me, so in a few seconds, I have to go.”

Spontaneously, Nepeta hugged her, slipping something into her hands as she did.

Then as quickly as she’d jumped-literally-into her life, Nepeta disappeared.

She looked down at her hand, half-expecting a dead mouse.

Instead, it was a beautifully preserved dried bluebell. In it was also a note scribbled in chalk-“Download Pesterchum 5.0 and add me-arsenicCatnip.”

She smiled.


End file.
